As part of your GCSEs you will read lots of extracts from the 19th, 20th and 21st century. Why not get
a head start and read some great books now.
The Catcher in the Rye, J D Salinger (Gen/Marx)
The Catcher in Rye is the ultimate novel for disaffected youth, but
it’s relevant to all ages. The story is told by Holden Caulfield, a
seventeen- year-old dropout who has just been kicked out of his
fourth school. Throughout, Holden dissects the ‘phony’ aspects of
society, and the ‘phonies’ themselves: the headmaster whose
affability depends on the wealth of the parents, his roommate who
scores with girls using sickly-sweet affection.
Lazy in style, full of slang and swear words, it’s a novel whose
interest and appeal comes from its observations rather than its
plot intrigues (in conventional terms, there is hardly any plot at
all).
Written with the clarity of a boy leaving childhood, it deals with
society, love, loss, and expectations without ever falling into the
clutch of a cliche.
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens (Marx/Pas)
For Dickens, corruption and degradation lie in the industrialised
urban landscape. ‘It was now too late and too far to go back, and I
went on. And the mists had all solemnly risen now, and the world
lay spread before me.’
A terrifying encounter with an escaped convict in a graveyard on
the wild Kent marshes; a summons to meet the bitter, decaying
Miss Havisham and her beautiful, cold-hearted ward Estella; the
sudden generosity of a mysterious benefactor – these form a
series of events that change the orphaned Pip’s life forever, and he
eagerly abandons his humble origins to begin a new life as a
gentleman. Dickens’s haunting late novel depicts Pip’s education
and development through adversity as he discovers the true
nature of his ‘great expectations’.
Briony Tallis, a 13-year-old English girl with a talent for writing, lives at her family's
country with her parents. Her older sister Cecilia attends University with Robbie Turner,
the son of the Tallis family housekeeper and a childhood friend of Cecilia. In the
summer of 1935, Briony's maternal cousins, Lola and twins Jackson and Pierrot, visit the
family. Briony witnesses a moment of sexual tension between Cecilia and Robbie from
afar. Briony misconstrues the situation and her meddling leads to much tragedy for
which she needs to atone. Please note that there is strong language of an offensive/
shocking nature used occasionally.
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
‘Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a
sin to kill a mockingbird.’
A lawyer’s advice to his children as he defends the real mocking bird of
Harper Lee’s classic novel - a black man charged with the rape of a white
girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee
explores with exuberant humour the
irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the
thirties. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and
hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina of one man’s struggle for justice. But
the weight of history will only tolerate so much.
To Kill a Mockingbird is a coming-of-age story, an anti-racist novel, a
historical drama of the Great Depression and a sublime example of the
Southern writing tradition.
1984, George Orwell (Marx/Pas)
Hidden away in the Record Department of the sprawling Ministry
of Truth, Winston Smith skilfully rewrites the past to suit the needs
of The Party. Yet he inwardly rebels against the totalitarian world
he lives in, which demands absolute obedience and controls him
through the all-seeing telescreens and the watchful eye of Big
Brother, symbolic head of the Party. In his longing for truth and
liberty, Smith begins a secret love affair with a fellow-worker Julia,
but soon discovers the true price of freedom is betrayal.
The Lord of the Flies, William Golding
A plane crashes on an uninhabited island and the only
survivors, a group of schoolboys, assemble on the beach and
wait to be rescued. By day they inhabit a land of bright
fantastic birds and dark blue seas, but at night their dreams
are haunted by the image of a terrifying beast. In this, his
first novel, William Golding gave the traditional adventure
story an ironic, devastating twist. The boys’ delicate sense of
order fades, and their childish fears are transformed into
something deeper and more primitive. Their games take on a
horrible significance, and before long the well behaved party
of schoolboys has turned into a tribe of faceless,
murderous savages. First published in 1954, Lord of the Flies
is now recognized as a classic, one of the most celebrated of
all modern novels.
Empire of the Sun, J G Ballard (Marx)
The heart rending story of a British boy’s four year ordeal in
a Japanese prison camp during the Second World War. Based
on J. G. Ballard’s own childhood, this is the extraordinary
account of a boy’s life in Japanese-occupied wartime
Shanghai — a mesmerising, hypnotically compelling novel of
war, of starvation and survival, of internment camps and
death marches. It blends searing honesty with an almost
hallucinatory vision of a world thrown utterly out of joint.
Rooted as it is in the author’s own disturbing experience of
war in own time, it is one of a handful of novels by which the
twentieth century will be not only remembered but judged.
The Time Machine, H G Wells (Marx)
When a Victorian scientist propels himself into the year
802,701 AD, he is initially delighted to find that suffering
has been replaced by beauty, contentment and peace.
Entranced at first by the Eloi, an elfin species descended
from man, he soon realises that this beautiful people are
simply remnants of a once-great culture - now weak and
childishly afraid of the dark. They have every reason to be
afraid: in deep tunnels beneath their paradise lurks another
race descended from humanity - the sinister
Morlocks. And when the scientist’s time machine vanishes,
it becomes clear he must search these tunnels, if he is ever to
return to his own era.